Pasquale, i don't know if you know this already but worth posting. I asked a friend who also runs a phpbb forum, this is what he said.

Quote:

160 mb is around 160 000 posts worth i recon. if you backup straight from the database ie not through phpbb you get alot smaller files maybe a third of the size . also backup just the posts cause that saves alot. also dont trus hosts they have no legal obligation to make sre backups are stored safely or they remain integrity

thanks, yes that is a good idea, to backup just the post info - indeed that saves a lot - the search_word thing takes up a huge amount of space.

Maybe your friend, or our other phpbb guru who helped with the strange error (sorry, can't remember your name) can tell me how to backup directly from the shell account, i assume there is some kind of backup command, just like the restore command i used to restore the DB after the move.

i assume i have to close the forum for a while when backing up. I wonder if it hurts to do the backup command with the forum still up and running.

Its weird, i dont know what to post, b/c all of my thoughts were alraedy posted. I go to view my posts, and its old topics that i stop looking at weeks ago, or i actually looked for old topics and responded to them as-well as new ones. Im just stuck now, im not sure what i want to talk about now , these people really threw me off...damn Hackers